LOVERS by Shan

Jared Brady and Jonathan Singletary sit down to talk about fatherhood, inheritance, and the difference between intention and what's already in the body.

Jonathan Singletary is a Los Angeles-based musician, songwriter, and founder of Piano & Prayer, a musical meditation and community gathering practice featured in the LA Times that has grown into a meaningful spiritual presence for thousands of people. Jared Brady is a creative director, actor, and co-founder of Shared Entertainment.

Both men are in the middle of the work. Jonathan reaches for his daughter on instinct before the decision clears his mind. Jared watches his father's disappointment move across his own face and recognizes it. Neither of them is reporting from a solved place — they're two fathers who love their kids, who came from fathers they love, and who are sitting with the uncomfortable truth that some of what they're trying not to repeat is already running underneath everything.

What holds this conversation together is a question Jared names explicitly: when you strip away the edited version of yourself, what voice are you actually parenting from? This episode earns its warmth by being honest first — about cost, about inheritance, and about the grace it takes to extend that same grace back to your own father.

This one is for anyone who is actively trying to parent differently than they were parented, and discovering that the work is less about what you know and more about what you notice.

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Show some love on Daddy Day with our sponsor Arya! Go to http://arya.fyi/shan and use code DADDY10 ;)

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Showing love to our sponsor Biologica. Take their Quick Hormonal Life Stage Quiz to find the formula that’s right for you, and get up to 32% on your purchase: https://biologica.com/lovers

Lots of love to our sponsor, Quince. Go to quince.com/lovers for FREE shipping and 365-day returns.

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Follow Jonathan Singletary

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonathansingletary

Website: https://www.jonathansingletary.com

Piano & Prayer: https://www.jonathansingletary.com/piano-and-prayer/patreon

Follow Jared Brady

→ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/enjoyjaredbrady

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https://yt.link/quMC2B9 → thank you for the sponsor of this episode hers. Learn more about hers. 

Inayah on what it actually takes to stop being someone who's always ready to leave.

Inayah is a Houston-born R&B singer and songwriter who first broke through with her viral cover of Ella Mai's "Boo'd Up" in 2018 (a moment that grew her following by over a million people overnight) and has since built a catalog — and a public identity — around emotional honesty, female independence, and not needing a man. Her forthcoming album is called Therapy Wasn't Enough, which is also the most accurate description of where this conversation begins.

In this episode, Inayah gets specific about what it means to be a leaver (someone who, at any given moment, is already scanning for the reason to go) and what it has actually cost her to try to become something different inside a relationship with a partner whose traditional Jamaican values regularly collide with her experience as a modern American woman building her own life on her own terms. Neither of them has figured it out yet (they're not reporting from the finish line here), and that honesty is exactly what makes this conversation worth sitting with.

This one is for anyone who loves someone and still can't quite make themselves put both feet in.

Big love to the sponsor of this episode, Masterclass. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any MasterClass annual membership at masterclass.com/lovers. 

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Follow Inayah

Instagram: http://instagram.com/inayah/

Stream Therapy Wasn't Enough: https://inayahofficial.com/

Want more Lover?

Get a free weekly Love Letter → http://loversbyshan.com/newsletter 

Join the Lovers Community → https://www.loversbyshan.com/community 

Explore free quizzes + worksheets → http://loversbyshan.com/quizzes
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Sex Is a Skill. Beducated is where you learn it. Join Beducated today at https://beducate.me/loversbyshan. 

Big love to the sponsor of this episode, CozyEarth! Head to https://cozyearth.com/LOVERS and use my code LOVERS for an exclusive 20% off.

Head to www.penguinrandomhouse.com to get your copy of Caro Claire Burke’s new book Yesteryear, a gripping, darkly funny thriller about an influencer trapped in a nightmare version of the past.

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Dondré Whitfield on why men cheat — and what nobody taught them about love.

Dondré Whitfield is an actor best known for his roles in Guiding Light, Queen Sugar, and The Game, and the author of Male vs. Man (a book about what it actually means to be a man in the context of family, fatherhood, and love). In this conversation, he traces the origin of his infidelity not to a moment of weakness but to a moment of watching his father lust after other women in plain sight (that was the day, he says, the cheater in him was born — not because he wanted to be that man, but because he didn't yet know he had a choice).

What follows is one of the most specific and honest conversations we've had on this show about what it looks like when a man finally decides to understand himself and then builds an entire framework so his children don't have to start from zero. His concept, "we date as a family" (where the whole family meets not just the person a child is dating but their father too, so everyone can help scaffold the relationship toward something healthy), is practical, radical, and worth hearing in full.

Follow Dondré Whitfield

Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/alldondre/ Website → https://www.dondrewhitfield.com/ Get Dondré's book Male vs. Man → https://a.co/d/0het8rPc

Want more Lover?

Shan’s AI trained to give you her advice → http://loversbyshan.com 

Get a free weekly Love Letter → http://loversbyshan.com/newsletter 

Join the Lovers Community → https://www.loversbyshan.com/community Explore free quizzes + worksheets → http://loversbyshan.com/quizzes
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A few weeks ago I put out the Melissa Ford episode, and the comments told me something I already knew before I hit publish: I crossed a line I claim to stand against. This is me sitting with that.

Chaos is a ladder. I've climbed it for twenty years. The only other ladder I know is love, and it's so much harder, because you have to actually feel your way up it.

I also owe a more honest version of something I said before about my life, my relationship, the joy I keep telling from the outside in instead of the inside out. So I'm saying the true thing plainly: I have an amazing love life. This is the year I stop building from fear.
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Showing some love of the sponsor of this episode #BEDucated. Join Beducated today at https://beducate.me/loversapril. 

Shout out to the sponsor of this episode #Quince. Go to Quince.com/LOVERS for free shipping and 365-day returns.

LOVERS! Right now, you can receive up to 32% off your purchase by heading to Biologica.com/LOVERS!

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Melyssa Ford has heard every version of the argument. She's seen the comments. She knows what people think about a woman her age with no husband and no kids who says she's genuinely happy. 

And she's back to say it again,  louder. In this episode, Shan and Melyssa get into the real reason so many women are quietly stepping back from traditional relationship structures, not out of bitterness, not out of trauma, but out of a clear-eyed look at what they were actually being offered. 

If you've ever felt like the options on the table weren't worth the cost, this one is for you.

Follow Melyssa Ford

→ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melyssaford→ Watch Hot & Bothered with Melyssa Ford (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgI18pIo71rZWq6upn_QxMgListen to Hot & Bothered Podcast: available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & all major platforms
→ Get her book Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself: 13 Lessons for a Life Well Lived: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58631608-allow-me-to-reintroduce-myself?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=n6x35X4UoC&rank=1

Want more Lover?

Shan’s AI trained to give you her advice → http://loversbyshan.com 

Get a free weekly Love Letter → http://loversbyshan.com/newsletter 

Join the Lovers Community → https://www.loversbyshan.com/community 

Explore free quizzes + worksheets → http://loversbyshan.com/quizzes
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